William Powell

Upbeat ‘Little Women: the Broadway Musical’ uplifts at UMD

An evening of delightful entertainment by the University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

Brave Spirits Theatre’s ‘Henry the Fourth, Part 1’ is a triumph of excellent characterization

If you like your Shakespeare characters to behave and react like flesh and blood people, and not esoteric abstractions, Brave Spirits Theatre’s Henry the Fourth, Part 1 is a play you’ll love. Director...

‘Grease’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts rocks and rolls

Grease is a musical that celebrates the changes born of the late 1950s era of rock n’ roll, drive-in movies, and James Dean–an era that sat on the cusp of the turbulent 1960s. Riverside Center for the...

‘NSO Pops: Diana Ross – Music Book 2020’ brings mesmerizing Motown royalty to the Kennedy Center

She’s mesmerizing, astounding, and accomplished beyond reason. I’m writing about world-renowned superstar recording artist Diana Ross. Ross, conductor Emil de Cou of the National Symphony Orchestra,...

‘Jersey Boys’ rides the highs and lows of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons in melodious style

There’s a scene in the mind-blowingly good musical Jersey Boys in which erstwhile hoodlum and fast-talker Tommy DeVito, founder of the internationally known singing group The Four Seasons, tells...

‘Other Desert Cities’ by Peace Mountain Theatre challenges and shocks

Peace Mountain Theatre’s Other Desert Cities, by Jon Robin Baitz, features outstanding, in-the-moment performances. Director Julie Janson directs a show that touches on themes ranging from family...

‘A Motown Christmas’ at the Signature Theatre brings soulful cheer

The scene was a cozy cabaret at Signature Theatre. The enthralled patrons sat at small, circular, red tables and swayed to “Give Love on Christmas Day” performed by The Motown Three, which consisted...

‘The Home’ by Nubia Filmworks at Bowie Center for the Performing Arts

As the Gospel stage play The Home opens, it is clear that the Thompson family must soon face a challenge shared by 43.5 million Americans—caring for a family member over 50. Nubia Filmworks’ Director...

‘Taj Express: The Bollywood Musical Revue’ offers dazzling dancing and majestic music

Taj Express: The Bollywood Musical Revue is a treat for the eyes and an ocean-tide of extravagance for the senses. This is a musical with dance moves that make you feel as if you are burning calories...

‘The Last Night of Ballyhoo’ educates and entertains at Bowie Community Theatre

Who is a Jew? Will you go with me to the Ballyhoo ball? Those are two questions the Jewish upper-middle-class Freitag family kvetch about during the happenings of playwright Alfred Uhry’s The Last...

‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ reveals universal truths at Baltimore Center Stage

Thoughts of a Colored Man is a poetic journey through the lives of seven Black men over the course of a day in Brooklyn, New York. Playwright Keenan Scott II has written, and Steve H. Broadnax III has...

REACH Report: ‘The Second City and Kennedy Center’s Jazz Comedy Experiment’ at The REACH at The Kennedy Center

The Opening Festival of the new REACH complex at The Kennedy Center featured a plethora of live performances and films, including the laugh-until-you-break-your-funnybone The Second City and Kennedy...

Review: ‘Nuthin’ But The Truth!’ by Black Carpet Productions

As the Gospel stage play Nuthin’ But The Truth! opened, the fictional Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in Mississippi had figuratively seen many literal and emotional battles in its one-hundred...

Review: ‘The Producers’ at The Little Theatre of Alexandria

Funny Boy, a musical version of Hamlet, A Breaking Wind, She Schtups to Conquer–could anyone predict how much those fictional plays would wow audiences? The Little Theatre of Alexandria’s The...

Review: ‘Tiger Style!’ at Olney Theatre Center

Buy your ticket today for a rich palette of cultural and political satire. Olney Theatre Center’s Tiger Style! is the best stage comedy I’ve seen in 2019. Directed by Natsu Onoda Power, a major theme...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Home, Sweet, _____’

Home, Sweet, _____ takes audiences on a sentimental journey through music, sight gags, and pantomime. Without words, Home, Sweet, _____ tells the story of a clown, the frenetic Collette Campbell,...

Review: ‘Hand to God’ by Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Featuring everything from simulated puppet sex, tawdry seductions and a mangled ear, the Tony-nominated Hand to God, by Robert Askins, is a play that dares to be different. Director William Dean Leary...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘I Know It Was the Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman’

Written, directed, and acted by playwright Tara Lake, I Know It Was the Blood: The Totally True Adventures of a Newfangled Black Woman, is a one-woman trip down the poetic and artful memory lane of...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Soul Redeemer’

The road to redemption can be an arduous one, especially when you’ve burned so many bridges in the past. LA TI DO Productions’ Soul Redeemer, with a book by Paul Handy, music and lyrics by Neal...

Review: ‘Hairspray’ by Rockville Musical Theatre

Rockville Musical Theatre’s Hairspray is musical dynamite. The winning trio of Director T.J. Lukacsina, Musical Director Marci Shegogue, and Choreographer Rikki Lacewell make this show ovation worthy....

Review: ‘Land of Promiscuity’ by Soul-Satisfying Productions at DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival

Family history, like any history, has a tendency to repeat itself. Filled with pathos, generational curses, and touches of humor, Land of Promiscuity, directed by LaRay McDaniel and written by...

Review: ‘How the Other Half Loves’ at Montgomery Playhouse

Farces are hard to do well or differently, but they nearly always impart an important lesson: always tell the truth. How the Other Half Loves is an innovative farce, replete with secret affairs,...

Review: ‘10x10x10’ A Ten-Minute Play Festival at Fells Point Corner Theatre

Fells Point Corner Theatre’s 10x10x10, a collection of 10-minute plays by Baltimore-DC area playwrights in its seventh year, always succeeds in creating energy born of audience anticipation. For...

Review: ‘Pride & Joy: The Marvin Gaye Musical’ at The National Theatre

Spectacular. Amazing. Unforgettable. Pride & Joy is a musical that tells the little known love story of Anna Gordy Gaye (January 28, 1922 – January 31, 2014) and the legendary and iconic R&B singer,...

Review: ‘How to Catch Creation’ at Baltimore Center Stage

Part soap opera, part sitcom, part reflection on Black feminist writers, Baltimore Center Stage’s How to Catch Creation is an expertly staged dramedy, with memorable performances. Playwright Christina...

Review: ‘The Honey Trap’ at Greenbelt Arts Center

The Honey Trap, a World Premiere at Greenbelt Arts Center, clearly has the best set I’ve seen in years: a mixture of ’50s kitsch, photos of ’50s-era entertainers, a record player console, plush-period...

‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ by Wolf Pack Theatre Company

What happened to the characters in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang when they entered adulthood? We find out in Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, written by Bert V. Royal and...

Review: ‘STOMP’ at the National Theatre

Started by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1991, STOMP is a cacophony of sounds produced by common objects in lieu of musical instruments. An amalgam of music, dance,...

Review: ‘A New Brain’ at the Colonial Players of Annapolis

Harmonious voices! Hilarious hoofing! A dancing frog! With over 30 songs packed into its 90 minutes, the Colonial Players’ A New Brain is a magnificent autobiographical musical comedy that is based on...

Review: ‘Leave It to Psmith’ at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Music and Drama Club (MAD Productions)

He’s charming, he’s debonair, he’s sophisticated, and when you’ve got a problem, you better call Psmith – that’s Ronald Eustace Psmith (“the P is silent, like pterodactyl”). You could feel the fun...

Review: ‘The Color Purple’ at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts

Magic. Magnificent. Marvelous. There are only so many superlatives I can muster in such a small space, but The Color Purple, now running at Riverside Center for the Performing Arts, is phenomenal....

Review: ‘Henry IV, Part II’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

After a smashing opening of Henry IV, Part I, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) has brought forth its terrific sequel, Henry IV, Part II. This play is wordier and less bloody than its predecessor...

Review: ‘Carmen’ by Annapolis Opera

There was a moment in the first act of Annapolis Opera’s Carmen in which Director Fenlon Lamb assembled her cast in a colorful tableau that enthralled me and impressed itself on my mind. This Carmen...

Review: ‘Henry IV, Part I’ at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company

Intrigue! Battles! History! Excitement! In a stunningly entertaining display of stagecraft, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s Henry IV, Part I features three of the best performances you’ll see this...

Review: ‘Three Sistahs’ at MetroStage

MetroStage’s Three Sistahs is a marvelous musical, an evening of vocal and dramatic excellence. Written and directed by Thomas W. Jones II – with a story by Janet Pryce – and music by William Hubbard,...

Review: ‘American Moor’ at Anacostia Playhouse

American Moor, in a return engagement at Anacostia Playhouse, lambasts the audience with a series of provocative questions: can an actor play a role without tapping into the darkest parts of their...

Review: ‘[title of show]’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Like TV’s “Seinfeld,” [title of show] is a show, to a degree, about the mundane. [title of show] is a musical about four friends creating a musical – the one the audience sees. Along the way, they...

Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Driving Miss Daisy, at Anacostia Playhouse, tackles many subjects: growing older, race relations, and all sorts of personal drama encountered by its Southern protagonists over a 25-year period,...

Review: ‘A Christmas Carol 2018’ at Wolf Pack Theatre Company

This isn’t your mother and father’s A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In this present day version, Ebenezer Scrooge’s father Andrew runs the charitable Scrooge Family Foundation. Tim Cratchit...

Review: ‘Season of Light: A Winter Fairytale’ at Silver Spring Stage

The simplest tales can oftentimes bring the most enjoyment. Steph DeFerie’s Season of Light: A Winter Fairytale tells the mythical tale of a young girl, Magda, and a band of actors searching for the...

Review: ‘Woman of No Importance’ at Scena Theatre

The first thing you notice about Scena Theatre’s Woman of No Importance is Alisa Mandel’s lush costume design. Like an unnamed character, her costumes define the characters nearly as much as the...

Review: ‘A Christmas Story, The Musical’ by Charm City Players

A more dazzling display of heart-warming family entertainment and memories may not be found this Christmas Season than Charm City Players’ A Christmas Story, The Musical. With deft direction by...

Review: ‘The Benjamins’ at the Music and Drama Ministry of Shiloh Baptist Church of Landover

“People that love money, they never have enough,” said a character from Director and Playwright Fay Brake’s engaging stage play, The Benjamins. With themes of overreaching ambition, greed and the...

Review: ‘East of Eden’ at NextStop Theatre Company

Can one escape the sins of their ancestors? Can one choose their own course and overcome an evil background? These questions are explored in NextStop Theatre Company’s glorious new adaptation of John...

Review: ‘The Crucible’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage’s spectacular and engrossing show, The Crucible, under Director Craig Allen Mummey’s expert guidance, tackles many contentious subjects, including sexism, racism, religious...

Review: ‘Dinner’ at 4615 Theatre Company

Dinner is darkly hilarious, absurdist and at times psychologically frightening. The play, similar to Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, is about a dinner party gone terribly wrong. Serving under the...

Review: ‘The Color Purple’ at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

“I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it,” said the character Shug Avery in novelist Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple, which...

Review: ‘No Time’ by Timeless Entertainment at Bowie Center for the Performing Arts

It’s been said that family is a foundation—the one area in which failure can cause permanent heartache. Director and writer Gill Nelson’s amazing stage play No Time, the tagline of which is “When...

Review: ‘Heard It Through the Grapevine – A Tribute to Motown’ at the Gaithersburg Arts Barn

“Motown is the soundtrack of people’s lives,” intoned Mack Leamon in his portrayal of legendary Motown record label founder Berry Gordy in Director/Writer/Choreographer Kashi-Tara’s musical Heard It...

Review: ‘Steel Magnolias’ by Wolf Pack Theatre Company

Steel Magnolias, by playwright Robert Harling, tells the southern-style story of a group of women who grow close while hanging together in a small-town, northwest Louisiana beauty shop. Truvy Jones...